


The Missing Blond

by cyclogenesis (addictedkitten)



Category: 5 Seconds of Summer (Band), The Veronicas
Genre: Alternate Universe - Noir, Detective Noir, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-11
Updated: 2014-06-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 07:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1771336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/addictedkitten/pseuds/cyclogenesis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Luke goes missing on the night of an important show, and Jessica's on the case. [A noir AU commissioned by the lovely Gina.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Missing Blond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [castoffstarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/castoffstarter/gifts).



Jessica’s door creaks open and a kitten slinks in. He brings in a little rush of heat from the waiting area, still only fan-cooled until The Veronicas Detective Agency rustles up a few more, and better, clients than the sixteen-year-old boy with the blond emo hair who appears to be her four o’clock appointment. He shuffles like he isn’t used to being seen, and the rest of his face hasn’t yet caught up to his full pink mouth. Jessica readjusts herself in her chair, arching a little to push her breasts out in her suit. She can’t help herself. The boy’s ripe as a peach about to drop out of the tree. 

“I’m Michael Clifford,” he says, staring at her. She lets her red-lipped mouth curl into a grin, and he swallows. “I called about the missing lead singer?” 

“Right,” Jessica says, sits up straight like a person with a job. Detective mode activated. She even closes the Nasty Gal windows on her desktop. “The police haven’t been any help?” She gestures to the chair in front of her desk, and he slides down into it, almost accidentally graceful. Boys like him attract trouble, she knows the type. Intimately. Mmm.

Michael shrugs, eyeing the plate of biscuits she’d been nibbling on. Jessica nudges it toward him with sharp crimson fingernails and he snags one without shame. “I don’t think he’s in any real danger,” Michael says, crunching his way through a biscuit. He licks crumbs off his full lower lip, and Jessica swallows. It’s time for her to get laid or possibly go to church. “It’s just we have a show tonight, and we won’t be able to do it if he’s not back by then, they’ll call someone else to fill in.” 

“Any suspects?” Jessica asks, already mentally scrolling through a list of possibilities. Off with a girlfriend, off with friends, fell asleep somewhere, just at the shops with a dead phone -

“We’re in a feud with another band,” Michael says, very seriously. “Like in rap music. There’s a beef. We…have beef?” He wrinkles his nose, his little teenage brain desperately trying to dig up the right phrase. This kid is a top class geek, and not in the smart sense. He’s got the pale skin of a devoted gamer with cheeks all rounded baby fat softness just starting to lean out. Whatever beef there is, Jessica bets they won’t be dodging bullets because of it. They probably won’t even be dodging diss tracks. 

Still, kidnapping isn’t nothing, and Jessica could do with a couple of hours out of the office.

“Our rates are thirty-five an hour,” she tells him.

Michael leans across her desk, tracing his guitar-calloused chubby fingers against her copy of the Sydney Times. “Isn’t there anything else I could do in exchange?” he asks, a soft flush rising in his cheeks, tinting them Lolita pink. He looks up through his golden eyelashes at her, green eyes bright and sincere. He looks like a teddy bear you could fuck. 

“You can’t pay me with sex, if that was your plan,” Jessica says, arching an eyebrow at him. Lisa would totally kill her if she let that happen again.

Michael mumbles, “Fine,” and slumps back into his seat with a pout. 

-

He looks appropriately awed by her red convertible, which Jessica decides they’ll take since she’s not letting a kid drive her around for an afternoon. She has a reputation to keep up here. Michael, who seems to be only newly acquainted with a concept of sunshine, borrows her spare pair of sunnies and wears the Jackie O frames better than she does. She has half a mind to buy him a milkshake for the ride and let him sugar baby it up good and proper, but there’s work to be done. Jessica’s a professional person and she won’t be led astray by a high school homme fatale no matter how much he keeps glancing sidelong at her and biting his lip. 

“It’s just there,” he says, pointing to a big grey building she’d happily cross the street to avoid. Because of course some little local band couldn’t have a practice space in a decent part of town, they have to work in a warehouse two shakes of pepper spray past comfortable. Jessica pulls her car down an alley, trying to park out of view even though the whole block looks abandoned. 

“Are you sure this is it?” Jessica asks. “It looks like a good place to get murdered.” She puts the car into park anyway and gets out.

“This is what it’s like to be in a band, no one around here can afford any better,” Michael says, looking as glum as possible for a kid who still lives with his parents but thinks he has money problems. Jessica thinks wistfully back to the days of not paying rent and a cupboard that was always magically full of nice coffee beans instead of the ground tinned stuff that’s all she can afford. “You don’t think they’re gonna murder him, do you? He’s only fifteen.”

“Christ,” Jessica says. She cases the joint so she doesn’t have to think about kids too young to drive. There are windows at intervals alongside the building but they’re too high up to get a look through. Some twenty feet away a guitar screeches and Michael startles.

“That’s them,” he says. “I’m gonna go take ‘em down!” He takes off running before Jessica can say a damn word. 

Teenagers. Jessica keeps a hand on her taser in her purse and races to catch up with him as he boosts himself clumsily up into an open loading dock, already yelling something about how they’re a bunch of bastards and give him his Lukey back. Then he stumbles and scrapes his palms and just whines. 

“I have a taser,” Jessica says, once the targets of Michael’s ire are in view.

A guy with spiky hair blinks at her, then looks back down at Michael. “I have a guitar?” he says.

“You have Luke,” Michael insists. “You stole our lead singer so you can take over our gig tonight. I know you did it, Jack, where is he?”

“We have a gig downtown,” another guy who looks sort of like the first one says. Jessica squints at him. She thought the scene thing was over. “We don’t need yours. That’s insulting.”

“Fuck,” Michael says. He looks on the verge of tears. “Where is he then?”

“Dude,” says spiky Jack. “You need to go find Kellin.”

-

“Luke _loves_ Kellin’s band,” Michael moans in the car next to her, all horrible teenage distress. “It was probably like taking candy from a baby. Or luring a baby with candy and then kidnapping it. That’s so mean.”

Jessica parks outside a relatively normal looking house. It’s less intimidating than the warehouse, but this place actually contains a kidnapper. She grabs her brass knuckles out of the glove compartment and slides them on. 

“Wow,” says Michael, distracted and suddenly starry-eyed. “Those are so hot.”

“Focus,” Jessica tells him. 

It’s kind of hard to stealth it up in broad daylight walking up a suburban driveway, so they don’t really bother. “Alex said the garage maybe,” Michael says, so they go around to the side door leading into it. 

Through the dusty window Jessica sees a blond kid tied to a chair. Jesus Christ, the music scene is brutal these days.

“I’m telling Twitter about this,” Michael says, his fists clenching. Jessica shushes him and goes to work picking the lock. She’s good at it, almost has it done by the time the inner door is opening and Kellin’s entering the garage. Behind his gag, Luke yells.

The lock clicks open, and, “Oh my god,” Jessica says, swinging the door open triumphantly and startling kidnapper and victim both. “You know abducting a teenager is totally illegal, right?”

“He came with me of his own free will,” Kellin says, eyes wide. 

“Fuck you!” Michael yells. “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! We liked your band, you dick!” He scurries over and starts untying Luke, who has #destroytheboyband scrawled across his face in black marker. Kellin makes to approach Michael, who hisses, “She has brass knuckles,” at him. Kellin steps back.

Jessica waves, showing them off. “Smile,” she says, and takes several pictures in a row of the whole scene. “You’re such a tool, he’s just a kid.”

“If you wanted to play a few more songs we would have let you, you didn’t have to get so mad about being our opener,” Michael says, sounding hurt now. He finishes untying Luke, and Luke throws himself into Michael’s arms.

“He said he wanted to talk about songwriting,” Luke says, all teary, “I thought it would be cool.”

Michael strokes his back, guiding him up to the door. “He’s an asshole.” Jessica holds the door open for him. “You’re so off the bill tonight and forever,” Michael hisses at Kellin.

“You’ll be hearing from the cops,” Jessica says cheerfully, and slams the side door shut.

Michael and Luke sit in her backseat and cuddle on the way back to her office, and at a stoplight she sees a few clandestine kisses in the rearview mirror. She thinks Michael’s first payment offer is probably off the table at this point.

Someone owes Jessica seventy bucks.


End file.
